The tourist attractions of the French capital suffer the most from the influx of tourists
"Surtourisme" is a new word that has recently appeared in the French press. As RFI notes, it means an excessive number of tourists. The right-wing newspaper Le Figaro, which devoted its Saturday edition to this topic, calls the discontent of local residents the first sign of this phenomenon.
Due to the influx of foreign visitors, many Parisians have long stopped going for walks on Montmartre. On Mont Saint-Michel and the Côte d'Azur, there is no room to drop a pin in summer. "Surtourisme" is approaching a critical point. True, local residents have not yet signed petitions against excessive tourism, as they do in Amsterdam, Barcelona, or Venice.
Developing tourism is certainly good, but it is also impossible to attract tourists endlessly; otherwise, the tourism industry itself will end up in a dead end. On the Parisian Île de la Cité, a huge number of souvenir shops and restaurants have appeared, which fewer and fewer Parisians visit. "Tourism needs a business plan and management. It is necessary to increase profitability, but not the number of tourists," says Pierre-Frédéric Roulot, head of the Louvre Hôtels Group.
"In France, the goal has always been to attract more tourists. No one even thought about a possible overload of the country. But it is necessary to pay more attention to quality rather than quantity, to find a balance between tourism, the living conditions of local residents, and environmental protection," says Christian Mantei, CEO of the tourism development agency Atout France.
To cope with the influx of tourists, the most popular monuments in France have introduced time restrictions or mandatory reservations, as well as online ticket purchases. The Eiffel Tower began selling tickets online in May, and visitors can choose their own visit time. All tickets are sold out until the end of July, but the most patient can still come and stand in line to climb the 1,789 steps of the "Iron Lady." Every year, Paris's most famous monument is visited by 6.5 million tourists.
In August, a visit to Versailles can turn into a complete nightmare, writes the right-wing newspaper. Many times they have considered changing ticket prices: making them slightly cheaper in the first half of the day and more expensive in the second, to at least somehow limit the flow of visitors. But tour operators oppose such measures.
At the Louvre, the number of visitors last year exceeded 8 million. The main museum of the French capital has increased ticket sales points and also recommends online reservations. The museum has several entrances open to avoid hours-long waits in front of the Louvre Pyramid. Every day in the summer period, the Louvre counts 40,000 visitors.
Those who live near the attractions say they are not so much concerned about the influx of tourists as about how local authorities are handling it. For example, residents of Carcassonne complain that visitors to the medieval fortress (which attracts two million tourists each year) park their cars "any old how." Over the past three years, the city authorities have built 430 additional parking spaces, increasing the parking lot to 1,600 spaces, but even that has not been enough. 300,000 euros were also spent on installing public toilets because local residents complained that tourists were relieving themselves in the bushes.
Not only local residents are dissatisfied with "surtourisme," but also workers in the sector are concerned about the deterioration of cultural monuments and the impossibility of accommodating everyone and providing everything necessary.
To avoid the "suffocation" of the most popular attractions, it is necessary to think about developing alternative destinations, notes Le Figaro. Apart from Paris, the Côte d'Azur, the Loire Valley, and the Bordeaux vineyards, foreigners are not familiar with other riches of France. The lack of infrastructure is a serious problem. Last year, 800 hotels closed; in the provinces, some places have no wireless internet connection, and there is a shortage of taxis or buses.
The newspaper reports that the Loire castles do not hold tourists for more than a day; few foreigners are familiar with the Auvergne region at all, while the Chaîne des Puys mountains have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage list.